Remembering legacies of Alaska veterans’ service

This past Veterans Day, preserving the legacies of military service weighed heavy on my mind. My mother is my last connection between me and the seven generations of family service members who preceded me. But her health is failing, and I fear for what will be lost when she is gone.

The Alaska National Guard is no different: neither immune to loss nor external forces. The men and women of the Alaska Organized Militia – comprised of the Alaska State Defense Force, Air National Guard, Army National Guard, and the Naval Militia – are the modern forebears of decades worth of service to first the territory, then the state, and nation. Thousands have served in Alaska. Yet as time stretches on, it becomes easier to remember them as a whole than as individuals. Even worse, the corps of military historians has shrunk, often in disproportionate relationship to the size of the military itself. And as the historians have disappeared, so too have the stories of our service members.

Recently, in preparation for a Veterans Day event in Juneau hosted by the Southeast Native Alaskan Veterans Association, one of our officers stumbled across one of these disappeared stories. Percy Blatchford was a Native Alaskan born in Golovin. Percy enlisted in the Army in World War II, and switched to the Air Force in 1948, when he became, more than likely, the first Native Alaskan to qualify for the elite Air Force Pararescue, or “PJ,” job specialty. He served the majority of his 30-year career at Elmendorf Air Force Base (now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson), and he left an indelible mark that exists to this day. The largest drop zone on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is named for the prized species of canine he trained for both land and parachute rescue operations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Malemute Drop Zone. Capitalizing on his Alaska Native knowledge, he literally wrote the Air Force book on Arctic survival. Thirty-six years before our current Alaska Air National Guard PJs parachuted onto the polar icecap for the U.S. Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory "Ice Exercise” to prepare for Arctic search and rescue operations, Percy did just that. By the time Master Sgt. Percy Blatchford retired in 1972, he was a legendary Alaska PJ, having saved lives across the state under the most austere conditions, and his retirement was commemorated in this very newspaper.

I am convinced that for every Percy Blatchford we know about, there are many more individuals and organizations whose stories await rediscovery. I’m thankful for volunteer organizations like the Alaska Veterans Museum, without whom we’d have never discovered Percy’s story, in addition to a new grass-roots group looking to build a larger veterans museum, and historians like the late John Cloe. All have done so much to shoulder the burden of documenting the rich history of the military in Alaska. They deserve our support, and to that end, I’m pleased to announce the Alaska National Guard has a command historian for the first time in 25 years. Our new historian will shepherd oral history projects, catalog artifacts and memorabilia, and participate in history-related community engagement. If you have a story to tell, objects you think ought to be preserved, or are interested in learning how you might volunteer to help out, please email our public affairs office at mvapublicaffairs@alaska.gov.

I’ve begun my own process of documenting my family history and sharing what I’ve learned with my mother. In a way, resurrecting the command historian program ensures that the legacy of our shared family – the Alaska National Guard – is preserved as well.

Maj. Gen. Laurie Hummel is the Adjutant General of the Alaska National Guard.

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